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Thursday, March 17, 2005

My mum, the she-devil

After a long hard day at some shitty 'Particle Physics Masterclass', I got home today tired and hungry. I asked my mum how long dinner would be. "37 minutes," she said. "I'm sorry, I wanted it to be ready for when you got back. I know you've had a long day.""No worries," I thought. "It's not your fault." 37 minutes later, I go back downstairs to eat. After getting up at 6 fucking 45 and getting home at the same fucking time in the evening, I sit down to a meal of fucking roast chicken. Roast chicken I do not like. This isn't some passing dislike either. It was the meal I grew to hate as a child, with it rammed down my throat every Friday night, my protests falling on deaf ears. My mum knows this. She was the one who dished out the fucking torture, after all. When I was about 12, she finally realised that I was old enough to decide what I did and didn't like. However, tonight, for the first time since that fateful night five or so years ago, for no apparent reason, she served roast chicken for dinner. "Mum," I said. "Why were you so apologetic for not having dinner ready for when I got home, having made something that I don't actually like?!" I don't think she heard properly. "When you start going to university, you're going to see that as a slap-up meal." No, I won't, MUM, because no matter how long I spend away from fucking home, it's still going to taste like SHIT to me. So I asked again. "Mum, why'd you make it?""It was all I had," she replied. Last night, she was moaning that she didn't have any vegetables, and yet, miraculously, she managed to serve vegetables with the chicken. This suggests one of two things: either she actually IS a witch, or she went shopping to buy vegetables and the whole making of the meal was a cold and calculated move. After a few seconds consideration, I decided that the second possibility was more likely, and so put this to her. "Adam, you're tired. Go to bed," was her response. This is a neat little trick of my mum's. What she does is, when she sees you're pissed off, she just says things to wind you up more! Then she tells you that you have an anger problem and that you need to see a psychiatrist! After 17 years, I've yet to work out whether she does it on purpose, completely aware that she's winding people up, or it's just something completely instinctive that she can't help. She describes it to me as "the natural response" to people in bad moods, but whether she's implying that it's a conscious or subconscious action, I'm not sure.

Incidentally, this is the same mother who blackmailed me into seeing a psychiatrist last weekend. This of course relates to her whole winding people up, making them think they have an anger problem. I was completely aware that I didn't have an anger problem, but I fear that she'd actually convinced herself otherwise. She therefore told me that I would not be allowed to go to Greece with my friends in the summer unless I saw a psychiatrist about my "anger". Initially refusing, she then told me that I would only need to see him once if I didn't like it, and I could go to Greece without having to see him again, she just wanted me to see if I thought he could be helpful for me. So, wanting to let neither my friends nor myself down, I agreed to her sad and pathetic deal. Came out after an hour with the psychiatrist (as in I left his clinic, not that I had some sort of sexual awakening), told my mum that I didn't want to see him again, and she said "Well, you're not going to have any choice in the matter." WoahwoahwoahwoahWOAH! Hold on a minute mum! You told me that I could go to Greece if I saw him ONCE. You didn't go back on your word... did you? So anyway, I told her that I couldn't believe that she made herself into a liar as well as a blackmailer, she was a terrible person and a terrible mother, my dad agreed, said he'd pay for me to go to Greece, the end. Hurrah. And now I'm eating jaffa cakes (which are apparently "recommended by sports nutritionists" and have a 'Jaffaholics Anonymous' helpline on the back of the tube) and bread after my 12 hour day, because eating anything my mum made right now would actually make me feel sick (especially roast chicken, because that makes me feel sick anyway). Oh yeah, and I'm drinking a yoghurt out of the pot because I can't be arsed to go back downstairs to get a spoon. Also, note how the swearing dried up towards the end of this entry. Writing's so therapeutic.